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noise when zones change

Hello,

I bought a Goulds 1.5 HP pump that draws water from my canal. Overall I'm satisfied with it , a lot more quiet then the everbuilt from home depot, that thing woke up my whole neighborhood. I did noticed however that when it changes zones that it makes a weird noise as if there is air in there, it's just for a few seconds until water starts coming out of the other zone, it does this for all the zones. Any ideas on what it may be. The check valve is in the canal BTW, so I guess there is always water in the pipe coming from the canal. Any help would be appreciated

You might be hearing something like "cavitation" which is liquid water temporarily becoming water vapor. The sound is often likened to hearing gravel inside the pump.

The generic solution for this sort of problem is to throttle down the flow controls on the zone valves, so they shut off as quickly as possible, so as to minimize the length of time that two zones are operating simultaneously.

If your zone valves don't have flow controls, you need to retrofit them so that they do have flow controls.

You can employ a cable locator, like the pros use, as they are available for rental. The caution before using them is to label all the valve wires connected to your controller, and to disconnect them before connecting a locator, because of the locator's output voltages. (the valves themselves won't be bothered)

An alternative approach would be to change the controller programming so that two valves are not running simultaneously. That requires you to program a delay between zones, and that might require you to purchase a new controller that has that delay capability. { but you know you wanted a new controller anyway, right? }